Abstract
Barbados is a small Caribbean island located on the crest of an accretionary prism about 125 km east of the Lesser Antilles volcanic island arc. The oldest strata, Eocene sandstones and shales, are overlain by Oligocene–Miocene chalks and marls, in turn overlain by Pleistocene reef and lagoonal limestones that cover about 85 % of the island. The Eocene sediments, which crop out in the Scotland District of Barbados, are prone to soil creep and landslides covering tens to hundreds of hectares. The largest historic landslide, the “Boscobel Landslip,” occurred on 01 October 1901. We used nineteenth-century and more modern topographic and geologic maps, air photographs, and various archival and petrophysical data, to supplement reconnaissance of the landslide in the field. We identified about ten million cubic meters of the displaced material of the landslide, as well as the meteorological and geological conditions that contributed to the Boscobel Landslip. Similar landslides would pose a presently unquantified hazard to inhabitation and future development in the Scotland District.
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Acknowledgments
Financial support to Cruden and Machel was provided by the Natural Science and Engineering Research Council (NSERC). We gratefully acknowledge valuable oral testimony of historical significance from Bill Mallalieu (a descendant of the Skinner family who owned Old Boscobel House); Edward Cumberbatch (Deputy Chair of the Soil Conservation Board of Barbados); and Norman Foster (who owns the property immediately north of the 1901 slide mass and was an invaluable guide in the field). We are grateful for a number of constructive comments by three anonymous reviewers.
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Cruden, D., Machel, H.G., Knox, J. et al. The “Boscobel Landslip” of October 1st, 1901—the largest historic landslide in Barbados, West Indies. Landslides 11, 673–684 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10346-013-0423-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10346-013-0423-3